Networks where multiple stations share a common medium require stations to coordinate access to the medium. A variety of protocols like Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA), Token passing and Polling are used to achieve coordinate medium access. Stations in multiple access networks exchange data using structured protocol entities called packets. These packets carry addressing information required to identify the source and destination of the transmission. Typically, each station in the network is identified by a unique address. These addresses are sent in packets to uniquely identify the source and destination.
Certain network situations may require stations to broadcast these addresses. This can be costly in some networks where broadcasting is inefficient and the addresses are large.